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| © Provided by Oath Inc. Grieving pet owners are freeze-drying their pets to keep their memories alive. (Photo: Getty Images) |
Forget taxidermy. Some grieving pet owners are freeze-drying their pets after they die to — literally — preserve the memory of their beloved furry family members.
While it might sound unusual — to put it mildly — to freeze-dry a
pet, the process isn’t as rare as it seems. Search for “freeze-dried
pets” online and a handful of businesses across the country pop up
offering the preservation service.
For freeze-dry artist Andrea Huntley of Freeze Dry By Cathy,
it’s actually a business she never meant to get into. Her mother,
Cathy, was a successful wedding florist in Newaygo, Michigan, who
started freeze-drying flowers in the ‘90s to preserve bouquets. “She was
such a trailblazer that she decided to self-learn the taxidermy trade,
and soon she was using her single freeze dry machine to do work for
other taxidermists, mainly turkey heads,” Huntley tells Yahoo Lifestyle.
The
request to freeze-dry pets started in 2007. “It was something she
wasn’t really fond of doing,” admits Huntley, referring to her mother,
“and at the time I wasn’t even in the business.” But when her mother was
diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (Cathy passed away in 2018 at age 60),
Huntley took over the business, which she says was “a sink or swim
moment for me.”
Huntley, who also does taxidermy work for museums,
nature centers and universities, has now been running the business for
eight years. She purchased three more freeze-dry machines and says her
electric bill is sometimes more than $700 a month, but Huntley says she
finds the job “rewarding.”
Her clients come from all walks of
life, but the one thing they have in common is that they love their
pets. That doesn’t mean some clients don’t question how this all looks.
“A lot of my clients worry about what others will think,” says Huntley,
who studied psychology in college. “Some ask me if I think it is weird.
I’ve had to claw my way to this miraculous point in my life where I
truly don’t care what others may think of me or what I do. And I advise
my clients to try to live the same way.”
What Huntley and other freeze-dry artists, as well as taxidermists,
have is a very different relationship with death than most people.
She
credits her mother Cathy with making sure death wasn’t a taboo topic in
their household, including while she was dying of cancer. “Our society
doesn’t deal well with death,” says Huntley, who was born in Alaska and
whose family lived off the land for years before moving to Michigan. “We
kind of avoid it. We should be giving people the tools to deal with grief and sadness and longing and death.”
Huntley
says that growing up in a rural environment you learn that “death is
normal and natural,” adding, “The more you understand something, the
less frightening it is.”
How the process works
In
most cases, the owner has already thought about the possibility of
freeze-drying their pet since they need to act fast after a pet has
died. Within 24 hours of a pet’s death, the owner needs to wrap their
pet in a towel, put it in a large bag, and place it in a freezer. Owners
then bring or ship their frozen pet to a place that offers
freeze-drying.
“Once I get the pet, we do the pose,” says Huntley —
referring to how the animal will be positioned according to the
client’s request, which can range from curled up like they’re sleeping
or sitting with eyes open — “and then I do my dirty work.”
Internal organs are removed — including the eyes, which can be
replaced with custom-matched, realistic-looking glass versions — and the
pet is washed and treated with preservatives that also keep away bugs.
If the pet had been sick for a while and lost a lot of weight, Huntley
will sometimes use fillers — just like a plastic surgeon does for deep
wrinkles — and then it’s frozen again.
Next, the pet is placed
into a freeze-dryer machine, which has a condenser unit with “intense”
vacuum pressure to remove all of the moisture. Pets remain in these
machines for four to nine months, on average, to complete the process.
The bigger and heavier the pet, the longer it takes.
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| © Provided by Oath Inc. Freeze drying machines at Freeze Dry By Cathy. (Photo: Courtesy of Andrea Huntley) |
After the freeze-drying process is done, Chuck Rupert, owner of Second Life Freeze Dry in
Springboro, Pa., tells Yahoo Lifestyle there’s little to do in terms of
maintenance, except dusting them with a damp cloth occasionally. “Some
people put them in a case, but most leave them out in the traditional
places they laid or in a bed they had,” says Rupert, who spent 20 years
in the oil and gas industry before becoming “intrigued” by freeze-drying and training under one of the top pet freeze-dry experts in the U.S., Mac McCullough.
Rupert
adds: “Only real caveat is to not sit them in full sun because hair
will fade. Other than that I tell folks if you’re comfortable, they’re
comfortable.”
The cost of pet freeze-drying isn’t cheap and is
usually based on weight. Huntley says her minimum price for any pet is
$700 for the first 5 pounds. Each additional pound is $75.
Freeze drying vs. taxidermy
There’s
a reason why freeze-drying is more appealing than taxidermy when it
comes to preserving pets: Your pet looks more similar to how it did when
it was alive. “Taxidermy requires you to remove the hide and place it
on an appropriate form,” says Rupert, who notes that most taxidermists
won’t do pet work. “Dogs and cats come in a million different sizes and
shapes vs. deer forms, for instance. While there are a lot of different
forms and poses, in general a deer is a deer.”
Rupert has a simple explanation that he uses any time someone asks
about choosing to freeze-dry over taxidermy for a pet: “A guy shoots a
big deer and drives around showing his buddies, etc. Drops it off at the
taxidermist, who puts it on an appropriate-sized form and does a great
job. Guy picks up said deer; it’s beautiful and he’s thrilled. If that
same guy had lived with that deer for 10 years, he’d pick it up and
proclaim, “That’s not my deer.” In the same vein, if a pet owner walked
into a room with 10 dogs the same size and breed as theirs, they would
easily be able to recognize which one was theirs.”
He adds:
“That’s why freeze-drying lends itself to pets. I’m able to capture and
keep the character and uniqueness of that individual animal because it’s
less invasive.”
Huntley adds that people also choose freeze-drying because it seems
less invasive than traditional taxidermy. “It’s very important to them
that their pet be as intact as possible,” she says.
And making them look life-like requires great skill. “One has to possess the eye of an artist,” says Huntley.
What it means to pet owners
Rupert
says that for people who choose to have their pets freeze-dried, it
provides them some comfort. “They get some peace from being able to have
them around,” he says.
Huntley, who owns a Himalayan cat named
Xerxes, never judges her customers, though she admits that it would make
her sad to freeze-dry her own pet. But she says, “I’ll freeze-dry him
because it’s what I do. But I don’t think it’s something I’d want to see
every day and be reminded that he’s not alive.”
She has spent a
lot of time thinking about why people freeze-dry their pets, saying she
could talk about it for days and never reach a conclusive answer. “The
best I can come up with is because they love them,” she says, “and they
don’t want to let go.”
